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Little bit of racing news

Just a little a bit of news from the 2nd claim CCA racers who have moved on to teams this year.

Dave "The Socks" Mitchinson who is now riding for Contour Cycles has been picking up points steadily at the crits this year with a few top tens. He's looking strong and hopefully will be grabbing a win in a Nat B crit pretty soon. It's on the cards as soon as he's got over the bruising from a bit of a tumble yesterday. I believe a fellow rider was distracted by his arm warmer/sock combination and got confused, thinking that he was riding next to a zebra crossing on a bike, he tried to cross it.

Charlie "The Student" Passfield has been smashing up the road races with his new team at Spirit. After winning the ERRL points competition last year and getting his 1st cat at the end of the season he's started this season off with 3 top 5 finishes in some of the toughest races of the season. The early season races are renowned for being a bit of a smash up and Spirit have been dominating them so far. In the Doltcini race Spirit had 7 riders in the break and took the first 5 spots on the race with Charlie coming in 4th. At the Severn road race an early break of 4 went with 2 Spirit riders in and managed to stay away to the end with Ed Clemens (also Spirit) taking the win and Charlie coming in 3rd and today in the Evesham Road Race he took 4th place. Incredibly impressive for a first year university student. Showing some serious commitment/restraint there!

Cam "The Fresh" Woolsey rode the North Road Hardriders a couple of weeks back and showed great form to not only pip his teammate Doug Coleman (who had some very strong results in time trials last year) by a few seconds into 4th place but only miss out on the podium by a second and only a handful of seconds away from 2nd place. I do believe he was held up by a tractor too. Good to see him up there so early in the season, we all know how ridiculous his TT results were (19:59 lap of our club 10 on a day that he rode it twice with the second lap at something like 20:20 I think. Borderline insane) last year, it's good to see him continuing the form this year.

Comments

  • Meanwhile in the first claim CCA racing camp... It's a bit quiet really, Martin and Dave are smashing up the Reg b crits which is great to see! I'm not going to race till later on in the year as I've been training rather hard for a sit down and eat pies competition. Neil M and Tom T have hung their competitive cycling shoes up and are back to just recreational riding.

    Keep the news coming in CCA racers, people want to hear what's going on!
  • Cheers Will. Good to get the lowdown on what everyone is doing.

    To add on the first-claim activity... I can think of Thomas and Simon King - both of whom have been crit regulars here and there. Though I expect Simon still sidelined with his injury.

    I saw Travis in the Ike Saul 2/3/4 yesterday. Looking strong and well enough to stick his tongue out at me on the corner at high speed. I hear he did well, though had to ease back near the end through illness.

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    Mat Porter also raced in the Ike Saul and is looking forward to the chain gangs this year: great for group riding at pace and effective drafting.

    And Jenny is on course to be ready for the Tour of Malta in April and looking forward to racing more afterwards.

    Hope to see everyone do well and a few more CC Ashwell riders have a go at road racing fun. See you on a chain gang - not long now all - mid/end of April and through the summer.
  • I was down at the MK Bowl at the weekend - mainly to take Arch along for the Corley Cycles Crit series. Good showing from CCA youngsters - Adam Lightfoot must have been top 10 or so in a full field of Juniors; Bit difficult to tell with som many riders spread out over the bowl, but Sophie Lewis looked like she won her event with some very strong riding in the lead group; Nathan and Archie went in the U14 boys - two riders in that group stormed off the front on the 2nd lap and were never caught; with finally Sam Q and Mark L finishing off the event (sorry missed your results). I had a go in the morning 2/3 race - it's fair to say that this quickly turned into a training ride with me and 4 other riders. But good fun and always impressive to see how fast the '2's go.
    Iain
  • Back on the road on Sunday just gone, a day ahead of being given the 'official' all clear by the Doc. Nice change to sitting on the turbo watching video's of everyone else out on the road having fun. I was in Tampa, Florida at the end of last week with work and decided to stay on a couple of days and enter the first in the US Gran Fondo series for 2017, started by none other than Frankie Andreau (really nice chap and very friendly!). Took on the 100 miler thinking I need to start training properly...rolling country, nothing too steep just continuous up and down with plenty of annoying head wind. But the sun was shining all the way and it was beautifully warm -85F.
    So after we sung the US anthem and stared at the flag for a bit we set off. The winner is judged by the lowest aggregate time over four timed sections, 1st for 3 miles, 2nd for 5 miles, 3rd for 3 miles and then a last 5 mile effort. Winner of the series (4 I think) can claim proper money (several thousand dollars) so there are a few people looking fairly fit and eager on the start line.
    I started off near the front and decided to race the first 3 mile effort which kicked in after 16 miles. I managed 6:42 which was 6 seconds off the best time and then just found myself rolling through to the front of the pack. After a couple more miles it was just me a French guy with about 100mtrs on the main group. We had a chat, found some common ground and decided to keep it going. After another 3 miles or so we were joined by a couple of others to make a group of 4 riders (a US National finalist same age group as me and a younger rider - triathelete training for IM Florida next month). We had a gap of about 300 mtrs and just decide to give it a go. So we pushed on and rotated through for the next 75 miles, keeping the gap and actually finishing well ahead of 'the pack'! Admittedly they would have continued going hard and easing up for a bit but we decided to work as hard as we could, giving the timed sections our best efforts but focusing on staying out front. At times it was a bit tough with only four of us but I guess we were a bit pumped up knowing we had a good gap and we wanted to keep it! Really good fun and great training. My overall segement aggregate was 5 mins behind the winner, but we finished the course in 4hr 30min which we were pretty pleased with. I eventually paid the price for pushing a bit had on the last timed 5 mile section when, after pulling for a good 500mtrs or so I realized I was actually quite knackered, so the other three rolled through and left me to make my own way to the finish line which thankfully was only another 3 miles away. Must work on the hilly bits though as my French friend, from the South of France, who was built like a climber and behaved like one, left me behind on more than one occasion on the up. Like a true gentleman however, he then backtracked and met up with me so we could cross the line together...now that was nice and I have a new friend!
    Tough bit was then getting the bike back to the bike shop and getting to the airport to get home but all went off fine.
    If anyone gets the chance to do one of these I'd recommend it. Well organized, not too large (about 300 entries) but of a pretty good standard.
    Otherwise Tom is doing the Chelmer race on Sunday if anyone else is entered.
    Cheers, Simon
  • Well done Simon, good to see you're back on the bike again - too late to get you to join us racing in Malta...? Fraid we decided not to do Chelmer - we're at Hog Hill on Saturday, but really need to pack the bikes up in advance of flying on Monday. Didn't see you after the Spring Scramble at Ipswich - I saw Tom puncture just in front of me (just as I was being dropped) - didn't see him come past me, but from the results, looked like he must have got back on the bunch..?
    Sure we'll see you soon - Hackney Primavera on the 15th at Lea Valley?
    Cheers,
    Dave.
  • Thanks Dave, good to be back out again. Unfortunately Tom didn't get to join in again in Ipswich, the puncture put paid to his race in the first lap - he was pretty miffed! We packed up and headed back early. Hope the racing in Malta is good fun and you get some good weather and see you back in the UK for a thrash round Lea Valley.
    Race Hard!
  • Thanks Simon, looking forward to it now!
    Ah, that explains it - the provisional results showed Tom finishing in the top 20, but looks like it's been corrected now. I thought he must have given it some proper welly to get back on the bunch from a puncture, and i didn't spot him being drafted back on... Very frustrating after travelling all that way... See you soon.
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